There is a lot of debate about whether to put a vapour retarder (vapour barrier) on an insulated wall behind shower tiles. The code has not historically been specifically clear on this so we get lots of different interpretations. What the code does say clearly is that we should not have two vap...
Sealants, caulking and other confusing vocabularyThere are all kinds of "sealants" used in construction.What we normally call a "caulking" is properly called a sealant -- a thick material that cures to a flexible solid designed to "seal" the space between two materials -- particularly two materia...
Letter: I have a ceramic shower, that is leaking, I do not know how it was built or what is underneath.In the last week +- have noticed about an ounce or 2 of water in the garage,I have a small openeing in the ceiling directly under due to the drain pipe, the drain pipe and feed lines are dry. Bu...
Ed writes from Ajax, Ontario : All 3 walls of my bathroom shower stall are finished with 4" ceramic tiles and are in good shape. When I had to remove one of them, I discovered that the drywall was behind it was so wet that I had to put a fan on it over night to dry it out before I could glue...
Good questions, since we are usually trying to take stains out of grout.First you should be aware that you can purchase coloured grout. The renovation stores will have three or four base tones to choose from, not too exciting. Go to a speciality tile store and you will discover a wide variety o...
Frank from Oshawa Ontario has problems with cleaning mould off the grout in the bathroom and dirt off the grout in the foyer.Soaked in dirt and stain in the foyer could be bleached out. If that doesn't work you will have to use a grout knife to remove some and re-grout. Remember to always dig...
There is a special knife made to remove grout from between tiles. It has carbide dust on the cutting edge. It does a nice clean job, although it does require quite a bit of elbow grease.For a power version for grout removal follow this link for the FEIN MultiMaster tool. Or for a DIY version y...
I always had the feeling that caulking from toothpaste like squeeze tubes had less body than caulking from gun cartridges. I recently received a whole array of caulking from Sascho, a manufacturer with a great line-up of products and it included a Mildew Free Sealant for bathrooms in a sque...
Commercial cleaners
There are a lot of tile cleaners, even some grout cleaners on the market such as those shown above or the newer cleaner specifically for grout, Oxy-Grout. They work pretty well if you have a stain on grout that had been sealed before the stain, because the stain will be somew...
The world of tiles is changing rapidly.
Twenty years ago we generally had a range of tile sizes from 1 ft x 1 ft down to tiny mosaic tiles. This made tiling relatively simple because slight changes in the flatness of the surface could be adjusted for at the next grout line. In fact that is...
